Leonardo da Vinci’s viola organista combined a keyboard with bowed strings, creating an instrument called the viola organista.
Leonardo developed the concept during the fifteenth century and illustrated it in several notebooks. Pressing keys selected strings, while rotating wheels or a continuous bowing mechanism caused the strings to vibrate. The design aimed to combine the controllability of a keyboard with the sustained sound of bowed instruments.
Unlike a conventional piano, the strings were not struck by hammers. Unlike a normal viol, the player did not use a bow held in the hand. Leonardo’s design therefore belongs to a family of experimental keyboard instruments that explored mechanical ways to produce continuous tones.
Leonardo never produced a definitive surviving instrument of his own. Several modern builders have created playable reconstructions, including one completed by Polish musician Sławomir Zubrzycki in 2013. The name refers to its hybrid of viola-like sound and organ-like keyboard control.